1 Table of content
Acknowledgements………2
Introduction……….3
1: The Logic of National Territories………..……….………..………..7
1.1 Performing Territories………..7
1.2 The Internet: Disrupting Territories………..10
1.3 Reclaiming Territories………..……..13
2: The position of Autonomy Cube within the Territory of the Art Institution………..…..17
2.1 The Territory of the Art Institution………..17
2.2 Institutional Critique: Disrupting the Territory of the Art Institution………..21
2.3 Institutional Enhancement……….………25
3: Spatiality………30
3.1 Being in Space: from Material to Digital Space……….…..……..30
3.2 Autonomy Cube: Positioning in Space………...35
Conclusion……….39
Bibliography……….41
2 Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to thank my thesis advisor Prof. dr. Robert Zwijnenberg for his advice and his ability to think along with me so generously throughout the process of writing this thesis. I would like to thank him for his openness and his mental and intellectual support in the past year. He has taught me that uncertainty and confusion are states of minds that we should not reject but embrace and that art and thinking about art could help us to do so.
I would also like to thank the second reader of my thesis, Prof. dr. Kitty Zijlmans, for taking the time to read my thesis. Throughout my Master’s programme I have had the pleasure to follow different courses in which she has taught me how looking at and thinking about art could help us to perceive at the world around us differently and how this Epistemological Force of Art could incite us to think beyond seemingly fixed traditional and Western notions of arts and culture. Her knowledge and enthusiasm have been an inspiring and wonderful addition to my year at Leiden University.
Futhermore, many thanks go to my mother, my sisters, my grandfather, my grandmother and Kies who have always believed in me and who have been there for me despite the chaotic and emotional times we all had in the past year. I would like to thank Niek for being so patient with me and for listening to me for hours, for reading the concept versions of my thesis over and over again and for the discussions we have had about art and life in general. His support and understanding have been crucial in the process of finishing this thesis.
Finally, I would like to thank my father, who has always been there for me and who has always supported me, wherever I went and whatever I decided to do. I want to thank him for his endless interest in the things I undertook and in the subjects I have been thinking – and worrying – about. He would have loved to read my thesis, and although he is not able to do so now, I hope he is still with me in some way.
3 Introduction
When I walked into the exhibition space of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam in 2015, I immediately noticed a sculpture that was placed in the middle of the exhibition space. This sculpture turned out to be Autonomy Cube. Autonomy Cube is an artwork by artist Trevor Paglen and computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, created in 2014 and still on-going [fig. 1]. It consists of an electronic device placed on a pedestal, encased by a transparent cube. At first, the artwork appears to be a minimalist sculpture: a sleekly designed square form stripped to its essentials. But a closer look reveals the device inside to consist of four circuit boards connected to each other and to the network of the art space in which the sculpture is shown. Through this means, the cube
functions as a Wi-Fi hotspot called ‘Autonomy Cube’, that allows every visitor of the exhibition space to connect to the internet. However, it does not give access to a normal internet connection, but to a Tor network; a network that anonymizes online internet traffic. This network consists of thousands of volunteer-run servers, that each function as a routing “node” in the network. Autonomy Cube is just one of them. In this way, the cube does not merely function as an independent hotspot that protects the data of users locally, but is part of an international network whereby it contributes to the protection of privacy of internet users from all over the world. This makes Autonomy Cube both a sculpture and a Tor relay. And it is exactly this tension within Autonomy Cube, between it being a sculpture and a Tor hotspot that I am interested in. Thereby the work goes beyond the more traditional notion of art as being an aesthetic object that transcends everyday life and that provides people with a sublime experience. Rather, the work really takes an active position in society. It does not transcend daily life and it does not merely give viewers of the artwork an aesthetic experience, but actively positions itself in the world outside of the gallery space.
The position Autonomy Cube takes in society mainly gets established through the Tor network it gives access to. The Tor network was released in 2002 and its main goal was, and still is, to anonymize data traffic of internet users in order to protect them against surveillance practices as executed by nation-states.1 Through these practices states can track everything one does on the internet, which gives them a sense of control. This is being done by checking the content of data – for example through reading e-mail and chat conversations – and by tracking down the routes these data packets take across the internet. So, practices of state surveillance can track and gather both data and “metadata”, that is, information about data. By both encrypting data and leading them through a random pathway of several Tor servers, instead of sending them directly from the source to its destination, the Tor network conceals both the exact content of and routes taken by the data.
1
4 The network thereby undermines surveillance practices as executed by states and challenges the political control states gain through these practices. By giving access to the Tor network, the cube then takes a position in what we have started to call “the society of control”.
The term “society of control” has been elaborately discussed by Gilles Deleuze in his 1992 article “Postscript on the Societies of Control”.2 In this article Deleuze describes the society of control as being a society in which diverse projects together control and mobilize the behaviour of people. He specifically connects this development to the emergence of new technologies, such as computers. In the past couple of decades, governments of several nation-states have increasingly started to make use of these new computational technologies in order to gather people’s data – offline and online – on a massive scale. Thereby states can create databases of people worldwide in order to map their behaviour, which allows them to control people by intensively spying upon them. In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed the extensive nature of this contemporary society of control by leaking several state documents about surveillance activities executed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States.3 These files, amongst other things, showed that NSA with its data-mining program PRISM collects massive amounts of online data via several third parties, among which Google and Amazon, often without their permission. Next to these practices of state surveillance, there are more and more commercial surveillance techniques that aim to collect data in order for corporations to improve their services or to increase sales. It could thus be stated that practices of state surveillance have been normalized; they have been adapted by several other institutions and social practices in society as well. In the contemporary control society, these diverse practices of online surveillance, varying from state surveillance to commercial surveillance, are all interwoven with one another. The control society then does not function as a panopticon, in which one centralized power has absolute control over a group of people, but is formed by a plethora of partial projects and initiatives that are each seeking for technological ways to govern and control individuals and populations.4
Importantly, Deleuze in his article discusses the control society from the perspective of space. He specifically describes the emergence of the society of control by outlining a development from a disciplined society, constituted by enclosed spaces, to a control society characterized by a more fragmented sense of space. In my view, the dispersed sense of space that underlies the society of control has to do with the emergence of the internet. The nation-state initially performed its
2
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, October 59 (1992), pp. 3-7.
3 Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras, ‘Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA
surveillance revelations’, website The Guardian: < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance> (accessed 30 November 2016).
4 David Lyon, ‘Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique’, Big Data & Society 1
5 space as a stable, enclosed territory. However, the internet introduced a more open and borderless sense of space that connects people across state borders. The space of the internet has thereby destabilized the enclosed space of the nation’s territory, which has led to a spatial confliction between the more traditional space of the state and the online space provided by the internet. I would like to argue that it is this complex spatial dynamic, between the bordered space of the state and the borderless space of the internet, that lies at the basis of the society of control. Although Deleuze has written his article prior to the widespread hegemony of the internet, he already states that: “Everywhere surfing has already replaced the older sports”.5 I therefore interpret the
emergence of the society of control, as described by Deleuze, in line with the emergence of the internet and its fusion with the state.
This thesis will specifically focus on the position Autonomy Cube takes within the
contemporary society of control as elaborated by Deleuze. I will analyse this position of the cube from the perspective of space. This means that I will aim for an understanding of the position this artwork takes within the society in which it is situated by centralizing the spatial dynamic that underlies it. Throughout my thesis, I will therefore constantly outline the different spaces and phases of spatiality leading up to the emergence of the society of control. Thereby I will foreground the spatial evolution that characterizes the coming into being of the control society. From there on I will determine how Autonomy Cube seems to position itself within the sense of space that this society provides. My thesis consists of three parts. In the first part I will theorize the space in which the nation-state exists; its territory. I will specifically focus on the evolution this territory has undergone in the run up to the establishment of the control society. I aim to do this by outlining the three spatial phases national territories went through in this process: first I will describe the traditional performance of nation-states as enclosed and stable territories, after that I will go into the way in which the open space of the internet destabilizes this enclosed space of the state and finally I will elaborate on how the enclosed space of the nation-state and the destabilizing online space of the internet have intermingled in the society of control. This will allow me to grasp the spatial logic that underlies the society of control, in which states perform their spaces as flexible and open, but nonetheless as controlling and mobilizing. In the second part of my thesis I will examine the way in which Autonomy Cube positions itself within the spatial logic as described in the first chapter. I will do this by analysing the space of the art institution, in which the cube is situated, along the lines of the evolution of the nation-state as described before. Thereby I hope to show that the space of the art institution is one of the public spaces part of the nation-state and that it has thereby similarly developed itself in line with the logic of the control society. From there on I hope to theorize the way
5
6 in which Autonomy Cube engages with this development of both state and art institution. In the third, and last part of this thesis I would like to zoom in on the spatial dynamic that is at the basis of the society of control, between the more traditional notion of material space and the open-ended sense of online space. Therefore I will go into the way in which we position ourselves in space and how this has changed with the emergence of digitalization and the internet. I will do this by mapping the way in which our mode of being in space has transformed through the fluid and digitalized space that underlies the society of control. By mapping the transformation of space and our mode of being in this space ontologically, I hope to show the way the cube actively positions itself within it. This will allow me to further conceptualize the active position Autonomy Cube takes within the public space provided by the contemporary society of control.
Throughout my thesis I will make use of concepts and insights provided by several theoreticians, such as Homi Bhabha, Arjun Appadurai, Chantal Mouffe, Krysztof Ziarek and Nick Srnicek. I therefore have no singular theoretical framework, but rather a multitude of sources relevant to the description of several steps in the line of thought that I will establish in my thesis. All these sources are tied together by the above mentioned article ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ by Gilles Deleuze. Although this approach might seem slightly fragmented, in my view this very nature echoes the characteristics of the contemporary society of control, that manifests itself in a multitude of directions, constantly decentralizing and destabilizing those conceptions and positions that we used to consider stable and unchanging.
7 1. The Logic of National Territories
1.1 Performing Territories
In order to understand the logic of national territories and how these territories are destabilized by the online space of the internet, we first need to explicate the way in which nations – a group with ideas about nationhood – perform their territories. I will do this by going into the line of thought postcolonial author Homi Bhabha established in his text ‘DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation', in which he approaches the performance of the unity of nation-states as revolving around the notion of time.
According to Bhabha, the nation-state performs itself as a unity through the creation of a univocal sense of time.6 This sense of time comes into being through the construction of a national narrative. This narrative is twofold. On the one hand, it is constituted by a history of the nation. The creation of this history serves to present the nation’s origin, which justifies its authority as a whole. Such a historical narrative usually exists as a linear timeline, constructed of historical events that illustrate the nation’s tradition. One could think of these national histories as the ones displayed in, for example, high school history books or national museums. According to Bhabha, these histories function as a national pedagogy that educates the people, through which they merely function as “objects” in a “nationalist pedagogy”; as passive objects confirming the nation’s myth. On the other hand, contrary to the linear narrative of history, there is a more timeless narration of the nation. This timelessness functions to turn all signs one encounters in daily life into something that is emblematic for a national culture, in order to provide the myth of the nation with an ubiquitous presence. Within this process of signification the people are “subjects” actively performing the narrative of the nation. Bhabha describes this twofold national narrative, as linear and as timeless, as the “double time of the nation”. This double time allows the nation to both present itself as a powerful unity and to monitor the people part of the nation, living within the borders of the state, to perform this coherence as naturally derived from a shared decent. Something that is made possible by the twofold direction this narration takes, toward an external construction of a national history and its internal dissemination, which creates a national bubble in which people automatically tend to interpret everything within the spirit of the nation.
However, the performance of a univocal time by the nation contains an impossibility. According to Bhabha, there is namely a split in the double time of the nation that emerges from the disconnection between the narrative as pedagogy and the way this is interpreted and performed by
6 Homi Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’ in: Homi Bhabha,
8 people.7 People born within a certain nation-state with a specific national culture, will be more likely to interpret the signs they encounter in their daily life in correspondence to the national myth propagated by this nation. But, a large amount of the national population actually has another cultural background and will thus interpret these signs in another way, as distinct from the national narrative. Consequently, this part of the population will not be able to perform their lives in
accordance with this narrative. This leads to a discrepancy between the way the nation presents its unifying myth and the numerous ways in which the people that are part of the nation act upon it.
Yet, many nations cover this instability within their time-space by concealing the nation’s diversity. This is clearly elaborated by Michael J. Shapiro in his article ‘National Times and Other Times: re-thinking citizenship’, where he explains the nation-state as managing a historical narrative that would promote the shared descent of its citizens.8 Inspired by Bhabha, Shapiro considers the nation to create a univocal temporality in order to present itself as a stable unity. However, Shapiro explicitly examines this process through the concept of citizenship. He explains citizenship as not merely a spatial but also a temporal phenomenon, determined by the dominant temporality
produced by the nation-state. This temporality is specifically executed through the construction of a national history. This history is propagated by the state through presenting its citizens as all having a shared cultural and historical background. In this sense, the nation performs a historically coherent sense of time that allows it to appear as a homogenous whole, in which everyone would have an equal sense of time and history. This univocal sense of time thus controls the personal histories of individuals and reduces them to the homogenous time presented by the nation. According to Shapiro, this is mainly being done by the narration of the national temporality through state documents, such as passports, journalist commentaries and official histories. These literary sources reduce the specificity of each individual to the overarching timeslot of the nation. This is for example the case with football players whose (other) cultural background is often ignored by the media, while their position in the national team is taken as an illustration for the nation’s success story. The nation thereby functions as an identity-producing unity that places each citizen within its grand national narrative. Citizens then derive their identity from their assigned place within the national culture. In the meantime, “other stories” narrated by the “others” within the nation, are actively concealed and wiped off the national stage in order for the nation to maintain its coherent appearance. A concrete example of this mechanism concerns the activities of the Black Panther Party in the 1960’s. The Black Panthers organised several demonstrations to address the struggles of black people in the United States. In order to repress this “other story” about America, the FBI
7 Bhabha 1990 (footnote 6), pp. 297-299.
8 Michael J. Shapiro, ‘National Times and Other Times: Re-Thinking Citizenship.’ Cultural Studies 14 (2000), nr.
9 (Federal Bureau of Investigation) created rivalries between members of the party and shot its leader Fred Hampton. The goal of these actions, as described in an FBI report, was to “neutralize” the political power of the group.9 In this sense, the nation seems to quite literally eliminate those who voice an “other” narrative that is considered to challenge the dominant national one. It is thus through the denial of the heterogeneity of its people and through the exclusion of “other voices” that the nation is able to present itself as a homogenous unity, distinct from other nations.
It could thus be stated that the nation performs its territory through the construction of a univocal sense of time, from which a national narrative is created. A narrative that on the one hand serves to present the historical origins of the nation, and that on the other mobilizes its people to perform in accordance with this narrative. The people part of the nation, living within the borders of the state, will therefore experience its borders as a natural given, justified through the historical narratives presented to them and through their daily encounter with signs ‘emblematic’ for the nation-state on the other. The creation and dissemination of the national narrative thereby controls the actions of its citizens, by which the diversity among them is repressed – and sometimes even actively excluded. This allows the nation to perform itself as a homogenous unity. In this way, nation and state appear as naturally connected to each other, which implies a certain closedness of the nation-state.
9
10 1.2 The Internet: Disrupting Territories
In the former paragraph I described the way the nation performs its territory; by appearing as a homogenous unity, distinct from other nations, and kept together by the construction of a univocal temporality. This unity appears to have been disrupted by the emergence of the internet. Or more specifically, by the activities that take place within the online space of the internet.
Nick Morwood in his article ‘The Translegality of Digital Nonspace: Digital Counterpower and its Representation’ describes the disruption of the unity performed by the nation-state by going into the counter-power of digital space.10 He states that digital space is situated in a transnational space and thereby automatically in a translegal one as well. This means that the online space of the internet cannot be fixed according to the specific location of a nation-state. Rather, it moves across several states by which it also circumvents national jurisdiction. According to Morwood, the space of the internet is therefore located in a “juridical vacuum” or “anomie” in which the power of the sovereign is temporarily disrupted. The counter-power of online networks then specifically lies in the way they subvert the dominant power of the established order. Both counter-movements and the established order attempt to gain power. However, they do this in very different ways. Whereas the established order works in the field of “constituted power”, that is power that is already created and in place, counter-power evolves from “constituting power”, which points to the creation of a space or situation in which power can be taken up. Constituting power is preceded by a moment of resistance, during which an opposition to the ruling power comes into being, and one of
insurrection, during which a collective realization emerges for the need of subverting the governing order. Counter-power, then, finds place in three phases which all work in the direction of creating a space that gives rise to a way of gaining power that counters the dominant order. Morwood thus articulates the counter-power of the online realm of the internet as opening up a translegal space, or juridical vacuum, by which it is able to evade and thereby to subvert the control of the regulating force of the nation-state.
An example of an online activity embodying the counter-power explicated by Morwood is Wikileaks: a website that allows people to anonymously post secret documents. Many documents posted on the Wikileaks webpage got picked up by newspaper reporters and spread rapidly throughout the internet. Several governments and companies whose files were intercepted and made public by the website, took legal actions. And it is exactly through these legal cases that the counter-power of the internet becomes apparent. After one case in 2008, when Julius Baer Bank filed a lawsuit at a U.S. court against Wikileaks because it had posted confidential documents –
10 Nick Morwood, ‘The Translegality of Digital Nonspace: Digital Counter-Power and its Representation’, in:
11 mostly revealing tax evasion – the judge ordered to block the website in the United States.11
Consequently, the URL address of Wikileaks was made inaccessible in America. However, the website never went completely offline. While the American URL address wikipedia.org did not give any results, its Belgium and German versions remained. This is because of the numerous servers the webpage has across the world. Servers that are located in several countries and therefore allow access to the website via several addresses – wikileaks.de, wikileaks.be or wikileaks.nl. These
addresses are indirectly accessible within the United States as well. After the court discovered this, it concluded that no further measures could be taken as Wikileaks did not provide any American, or even physical presence from which any action could be compelled. The online realm of Wikileaks thus literally disrupts national jurisdiction by occupying the loopholes its system provides. It does this by creating a translegal space in which journalists or citizens can anonymously share information they would not be able to share within the legal boundaries of national legislation. The regulating force of nation-states is thereby bypassed and countered.
The “juridical vacuum” elaborated by Morwood, however, does not just contain a place without any law. Rather, it points to a space in which laws cannot be enforced by authorities, such as national governments.12 As mentioned in the former section, the nation-state performs its territory by controlling its people. It does this by imposing its unifying narrative onto them. A narrative that is also given form to by the system of national jurisdiction. But, it is exactly this narrative that is circumvented by the translegal spaces opened up by the internet. Although the state attempts to impose its national narrative onto these online spaces – as we have seen with the case of Wikileaks – it fails to do so while it lacks the means to control them; the juridical systems presented by nation-states cannot seem to get a grip on online activities. The online juridical vacuums described by Morwood thus specifically disrupt the means by which the nation-state is able to control its nation – and thereby to preserve the national narrative it propagates to present itself as a unity. Instead, these spaces allow people to take matters into their own hands and to get rid of or even reveal the supressing measures taken by the nation-state.
The disruption of the controlling force of the nation-state by the internet is further explained by Arjun Appadurai, who describes the movement of technology to actively disorganize the narrative of the nation. He states that the basis of this disruption lies in the increasing overlap of different “global flows” triggered by the movement of globalization. In his article ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’ Appadurai explicates several of these flows, or “scapes”, among which the ideoscape and the technoscape. The ideoscape would signify a series of interconnected images illustrating political ideologies and state power. An example of this would then be the chain
11 Morwood 2013 (footnote 10), pp. 104-108. 12
12 of ‘images’ constituting the dominant national narrative of a state. The technoscape would point to the fluid configuration of technology that increasingly moves across “previous impervious
boundaries”, of which the transnational existence of the internet seems to be part as well. According to Appadurai, these scapes each have their own chaotic character and move across the globe with an increasing speed and reach. Because of this, they do not move in synchrony with each other, but rather, overlap and disjunct. In the case of the ideoscape and the technoscape, this means that the elements – images, narratives and terms – together forming the coherent ideoscape of a specific state get displaced by the global force of the technoscape. Or more specifically, the signs constituting a state ideology get disconnected from their location within this state as they are distributed across the world by the transnational reach of the internet. Consequently, the signs of different ideoscapes will merge together. People living in a nation will therefore get in touch with several state ideologies, not necessarily connected to the nation-state they are part of. The national narrative thereby loses its internal coherence, whereby the state loses control over its nation. This deterritorialization of national ideoscapes, triggered by the internet, then leads to a disconnection between nation – a group of people with similar ideas about nationhood – and state. According to Appadurai, nation-states therefore “find themselves pressed to stay open” in order to survive.13 By which he means that the enclosed system of signification offered by the narrative of the nation is cracked open by the free-floating movement of the internet. The performance of the state as an enclosed coherent unity then gets disrupted, whereby its centralized power is countered.
In short, the online space of the internet disrupts the territory of the nation-state by undermining the means it has to control its nation and thereby to appear as a demarcated stable whole. This is first of all being done by the creation of online juridical vacuums, by which the internet is able to bypass national jurisdiction – through which the nation-state is able to both control and narrate its nation. Furthermore, those elements that constitute and communicate the national narrative, through which its diverse nation is kept together, get fragmented and disseminated across the globe through the transnational reach of the internet. The internet therefore disrupts the unifying national narrative of the nation-state whereby the people part of a nation are incited to imagine a world beyond the borders of their state. In this way, nation and state are actively disconnected from each other by which the closedness of the nation-state as mentioned in the former section is now cracked open. The authoritarian power that the nation-state derives from its appearance as an enclosed unity therefore gets subverted by the existence of the internet.
13 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.’ In: Arjun Appadurai,
13 1.3 Reclaiming Territories
In the previous part I have suggested the subversion of the territory of the nation-state through the means of the counter-power of the online space that the internet provides. In this part, however, I will demonstrate that the state did not simply give up on its hegemony. Rather, it has attempted to reclaim power through surveillance practices and through governing the flows of techno-capital. While Morwood states that the realm of the internet functions as a counter-power, countering the power of the nation-state, he seems to have overlooked the way nation-states in the past decade have tried to reclaim their power by colonizing the space of the internet. Or, as the artist collective Metahaven observes: “The internet began as a place too complicated for nation-states to
understand; it ended up, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as a place only nation-states seem to understand”.14 The internet today thus does not merely operate as a counter-power, but reveals the extensive reach of the hegemony of the nation-state.
As has been described in the previous paragraphs, in the past decade the controlling practices of the nation-state have been bypassed by the space of the internet. This has to do, amongst other things, with the emergence of a large amount of data that flows through the digital realm with an incredible speed and flexibility. This makes it difficult for states to get a grip on online space. David Lyon in his article ‘Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique’ terms this increase of digital data on the internet “Big Data”: the presence of a huge amount of user data on the internet, too complex for traditional digital tools to process.15 With the advent of online platforms, such as Google, Yahoo and, during the past ten years, social media platforms like Facebook, an increasing amount of data started to circulate on the internet. Most of these data come from information individuals posted online by making use of one of these
platforms, such as the content of online chat conversations, email addresses or telephone numbers. Users insert these when they, for example, would like to a buy a ticket for an event. In addition to this consciously added information, there are also other kinds of data present in the online realm of the internet, like those based on individual search behaviour on the internet and on the specific interests or preferences of people. These kinds of data are called metadata, or “data about data”.16 With more and more daily activities moving into the realm of the internet, such as banking,
registering at a city council or even dating, an increasing part of people’s daily life takes place on the level of online data. This is what Lyon terms “datafication”: the way in which people and their
14
Metahaven, ‘Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All Tomorrow’s Clouds’, in: Julieta Aranda, Brian Kudan Wood, Anton Vidokle (ed.), E-flux Journal. The Internet does not exist, Berlin 2015, p. 246.
15 Lyon 2014 (footnote 4), pp. 1-13. 16
14 actions increasingly get expressed in terms of data or digital information. Contemporary societies thereby get structured more and more according to the logic of digital data; flows of information and communication constantly move with an increasing flexibility in a variety of directions, organizing things both globally and of the microscopic level of digital codes. The emergence of big data thus reinvigorates the fluid and elastic infrastructure of the internet, through which a variety of information moves increasingly fast and smooth, free from state control.
However, the notion of the internet as a space in which data moves freely without being governed by any form of authoritarian power seems to be out-dated. Over the course of the past fifteen years the nation-state has developed several ways to reclaim the control it seemed to have lost through the transnational and “free” realm of the internet. It has mainly done this by expanding its surveillance techniques, through which the state has been able to restore its controlling power. In order to do this the state has, first of all, created several laws which enable it to enter the databases of numerous large technology companies, among which Google, Apple and Microsoft –
circumventing the original privacy policy of these platforms. This became apparent, for example, in 2013 when it was revealed that the NSA (National Security Agency) in the United States demanded access to the databases of important cloud providers like Yahoo in order to execute its
surveillance.17 Furthermore, states have engaged external corporations that assist the government with gathering data for its own database and that develop newer techniques to intercept internet traffic more sufficiently. Governmental authorities therefore have access to an immense amount of data produced by an enormous amount of people. This information, however, is not collected in order to track a specific suspicious person, but it is gathered before a target is determined in order to map social patterns and behaviour of all citizens. This mapping takes place in order to detect each and every possible threat. Lyon therefore speaks of a “mass surveillance” that targets everyone. And theoretician Gary T. Marx describes this as a new type of surveillance that no longer just focuses on “close observation of a suspected person”, but rather on “the use of technical means to extract or create personal data” in general.18 This massive form of state surveillance seems to control societies
in a totalitarian way as it is able to control everyone, regardless of their degree of suspicion. Furthermore, because the state has access to almost every cloud provider or online database, it is able to control society through a high variety of online sources; via smartphones, online platforms like Google and Facebook and via third parties like telephone companies. Moreover, state
authorities are able to track data in real-time, through which means they can literally follow every
17 In 2013 Edward Snowden former technical assistant for the CIA, leaked secret documents from the NSA,
revealing their global surveillance programmes. These documents showed the collaboration of NSA with several internet and telecommunication companies.
18 Gary T. Marx, ‘What’s New about the “new Surveillance”?: Classifying for Change and Continuity’,
15 step one takes on the internet. The presence of “Big Data” in the online realm of the internet thus intensifies state surveillance by increasing the speed and scope of these practices. In this sense, the controlling force of the nation-state appropriates the form of the flexible flows of data.
An important aspect of this “new surveillance”, evolved through the adoption of big data, is the lack of transparency about its organizational structure. This change, from transparency to opacity, is clearly illustrated by artist collective Metahaven in their text ‘Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All Tomorrow’s Clouds’ in which they describe the way general Keith Alexander, who was the director of the NSA until 2014, publicly presented himself.19 Alexander initially used to appear in full military attire, through which he emphasized his authoritarian power. Later, however, he only appeared in public wearing black t-shirts, by which he presented himself as an “invisible
bureaucrat”. This transformation from visibility to invisibility is indicative of the way the controlling power of the state has changed over time. Whereas the nation-state used to present its ruling power through highly visible buildings, ceremonies or uniformed authorities, now it’s power becomes apparent through less visible legislation and meetings in secret. In the case of surveillance practices, this means that the programs and organizations through which information is intercepted become more and more invisible to the people whose data is gathered and analysed. While the daily lives of citizens become increasingly transparent, the controlling power of the state thus becomes
increasingly opaque. This allows the state to intensify its control over its people, as they are not aware of the extent to which they are being spied upon. People then do not have the room to choose whether they entrust their data to (the interpretation of) national security agencies. Rather, this choice is made for them.
This transition from visible to invisible is reminiscent of the transformation of disciplined societies to controlled societies, as it is described by Gilles Deleuze in his article ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’.20 In this text he describes the notion of a disciplinary society that is constituted by distinct spaces of enclosure, or “molds”. Individuals within such a society move from one such an enclosed space to another. In the 19th century, for example, as soon as one had finished school one
would start a new phase as a worker in a factory. After leaving one space one would thus enter another. All these enclosed molds have their own rules and laws, but they are analogous to each other; they exist next to each other as distinct unities. The logic of this disciplinary society is, however, vanishing. It slowly gets replaced by the logic of the “society of control”, which is formed by “ultrarapid forms of free-floating control”. The society of control does not consist of a number of molds with a solid form, but of modulations that constantly change shape. These self-deforming modulations shape themselves depending on the situation they are in, which makes them flexible
19 Metahaven 2015 (footnote 14), pp. 247-249. 20
16 and fluid. Furthermore, they do not have a fixed location in society, but are continuously moving through it. In this sense, they function as continuous forces of control. According to Deleuze, this type of control is formed by the technological devices we use. While the older disciplined societies of sovereignty made use of clocks and watches through which time and structure were dictated, the society of control is established by the use of computers, which give one access to the widespread network of the internet. The fluid infrastructure of this network, through which data move rapidly in a variety of directions, disperses the centralized power that is associated with the enclosed spaces of the disciplined society. The bordered unity of the nation-state, as being one of the enclosed spaces constitutive for the society of discipline, therefore gets fragmented as well. However, the state’s controlling power does thereby not get disrupted. Rather, it becomes more extensive; it takes on another, more decentralized form, a new guise that is not connected to its appearance as a coherent unity but to the free-floating form of online data. This form is more refined and less visible than the centralized way of distributing power as it makes use of the same “dataficated” infrastructure that increasingly mobilizes the daily lives of people. In its urge for control the nation-state thus reclaims its hegemony through appropriating the fluid structure of online space. The territory of the nation-state thereby gets transformed from an enclosed space into a free-floating space with free-floating control, hard to recognize and even harder to escape from.
In summary, the territory of the nation-state, and thereby the power it derives from it, seems to be disrupted by the free flow of online data. But, it turns out that the nation-state reclaims this power through finding ways of controlling the fluidity of the infrastructure of the internet. It does this mainly by further developing its surveillance practices, that by governing the circulation of big data have extended their reach and flexibility. The control of the nation-state thereby takes on another, advanced facade that corresponds to the free-floating flows of data on the internet. This control deeply penetrates society as it moves through the same refined and flexible form as the digital infrastructure that increasingly informs and structures peoples’ daily lives. The organizational structure behind the distribution of this control is therefore more difficult to recognize and to avoid. It could thus be stated that the implication of the online space of the internet on the territory of the nation-state is that it transformed the enclosed space of its territory into a dispersed space with its own free-floating control. This free-floating form of control is less transparent and has a wider reach than the centralized control that preceded it by which it is able to govern society in a more
17 2. The position of Autonomy Cube within the territory of the Art Institution
2.1 The territory of the Art Institution
In the first chapter of my thesis I have shown the way in which the fluid space of the internet alters the enclosed territory of the nation-state; by not merely disrupting its unity, but rather by
transforming the shape of its controlling power. In this chapter I would like to analyse the way in which Autonomy Cube positions itself within this development. I will do this by perceiving the art institution, in which the work is exhibited, along the lines of the evolution of the space of the nation-state as it is described above. From there on, I will theorize the way in which Autonomy Cube engages with this spatial development of both state and art institution. In order to do this I will first demonstrate the way in which the space of the art institution can be understood as its own
autonomous territory, functioning according to the same logic as that of the nation-state.
Autonomy Cube is situated within a demarcated space; a particular space that exists within the white walls of the art institution. The artwork is shown on a pedestal and has the form of a cube, by which it appears as a minimalist sculpture, presented according to traditional modes of exhibiting art [fig. 2]. The pedestal is reminiscent of the way sculptures and artworks have been displayed in museums for decades as objects of value that should be objectively studied. This traditional view on perceiving art is something that minimalist sculptures are often associated with as they would embody pure and objective form, through which they would be isolated from more socio-political debates in the ‘real world’.21 In this sense, Minimal Art would emphasize the notion of art as consisting of neutral objects that should be contemplated with aesthetic distance. The white cube, an archetypal exhibition space existing of white walls in which artworks can be shown neutrally, fits this approach towards art perfectly. Brian O’Doherty in his classic essay ‘Inside the White Cube. The Ideology of an Exhibition Space’ describes the white cube as a space with white walls, without windows through which the outside world can be sealed off.22 Art can thereby exist in its own world.
This parallel world of art is not governed by the vicissitudes of time, but is, rather, timeless. The art institution thereby functions as a sort of vacuum in which artworks can be presented as distinct from the space and time in which they are created, through which their formal and aesthetic qualities are centralized. The art space of the white cube then is a demarcated space with its own logic, according to which the outside world is transcended and in which art is attributed a seemingly sacred position.
21 Wouter Davidts, ‘Messy Minimalism. Voorbij de White Cube’, De Witte Raaf 93 (2001), website De Witte
Raaf: <http://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/detail/nl/2351> (accessed 5 November 2016).
22
Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube. The Ideology of an Exhibition Space, Los Angeles 1986
ᶟ
(1976), pp. 14-15.18 The notion of Minimal Art as an art form that mainly focuses on pure form, without any external references, validates this way of presenting art. By both appearing as a cube, which is the geometric figure of Minimal Art par excellence, and by taking up the term “cube” in its title, Autonomy Cube thus specifically refers to the model of the white cube, in which art can be shown autonomously. The notion of the white cube as being a vacuum, presenting art as distinct from the outside world, corresponds to the way in which the nation performs its territory. As I elaborated in the first part of my thesis, the nation performs its territorial space by creating a unifying national narrative that would emphasize the cohesion amongst its people. This narrative works into two directions; the external creation of a historical narrative and the internal dissemination of signs that are part of this narrative through which everything one encounters is turned into something that is emblematic for a national culture. In this sense, a bubble of signification is created in which every citizen
automatically tends to interpret things as supporting the nation’s myth. It is through this bubble that the nation is able to present itself as a coherent unity, distinct from other nations with different myths and ideologies. Just like the enclosed system of signification offered by national narratives, the model of the white cube also appears as an enclosed space that functions according to a specific narrative. O’Doherty compares this space of the gallery to Egyptian tomb chambers which
functioned to preserve the eternal presence of the dead and to protect them from the passing of time.23 Similarly, the white cube would present artworks as appearing outside of time whereby they would create a space of timelessness in which the eternal beauty of art could be preserved. The art institution thereby functions as an autonomous bubble in which art could be sheltered from the constant change and time in the real world. The narrative according to which the art institution appears as a vacuum for art then revolves around the notion of artworks as being aesthetic objects, transcending space and time. The white walls of the art institution materialize this narrative around art as they literally isolate art from society and as they provide a neutral context for the artworks through which their formal aspects can be emphasized. This incites visitors, entering the exhibition space, to automatically perceive the artworks on show in accordance with this myth around art. The specific presentation of art by the white cube then directs the way people contemplate art and withholds them from connecting art to the socio-political reality outside of the cube. Similar to the bubble of signification created by the narrative of the nation, the art institution then also creates an enclosed system of signification in which people cannot but interpret the artworks they encounter within the institution according to the myth it propagates. Just like the way in which the nation-state performs its territory, the art institution thus equally performs itself as an enclosed space – both by
23
19 sheltering art from the constant change and time of the outside world and by offering an enclosed system of signification that directs the way in which visitors of the art institution perceive art.
Crucially, this enclosed space of the art institution holds on to a dominant mode of exhibiting art. It particularly presents artworks as aesthetic objects that should be displayed as distinct from the outside world. Thereby the art institution conceals the diversity amongst the different meanings art could obtain. The mechanism of repressing this diversity could be described according to the notion of hegemonic practice as elaborated by Chantal Mouffe in her book Agonistics. Thinking the World Politically.24 In this book Mouffe describes society as existing of all kinds of “hegemonies”, that are each formed through the sedimentation of social practices, through which social actions become institutionalized. In public space, several of these hegemonies confront each other. In this “hegemonic struggle”, as Mouffe calls it, dominant hegemonies repress other ones. This means that dominant hegemonies silence and obliterate other hegemonies in order to maintain in control. Within this context, the art institution can be considered a dominant hegemony as well, in the sense that it controls the way in which artworks are interpreted by its audience. The institution often explains artworks in accordance with the notion of art as containing a formal beauty that should be contemplated with aesthetic distance. Thereby an alternative interpretation of the works on display, in relation to the socio-political reality outside of the art institution for instance, is made more difficult. A concrete example of this mechanism is the presentation of indigenous art within art institutions. Indigenous artworks are often displayed as an illustration of the dominant narrative around art, through which their formal qualities are centralized.25 However, the ritual function these works have within the indigenous communities in which they are created is thereby neglected and obscured. The art institution then reduces the signification of these artworks to its own narrative around art whereby it conceals the diverse ways in which art could be perceived – and the diverse possible meanings artworks could thereby obtain. This allows the institution to centralize its own dominant mode of looking at art and thereby to control the way in which art is interpreted by its public. This modus operandi of the art institution corresponds to the way in which the nation-state reduces the personal histories of individuals to the overarching narrative of the nation in order to narrate the coherence of its people. As elaborated in the previous chapter of this thesis, the state thereby conceals those biographies with an “other” cultural or ethnic background and subordinates them to the unifying myth of the nation. It can thus be stated that the art institution performs its space in accordance with the mechanisms by which the state performs its
24
Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics. Thinking the World Politically, London/ New York 2013, pp. 87-94.
25 The presentation of “primitive” artworks in the exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the
Tribal and the Modern from 1984 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is a good example of this. For more information see: Hal Foster, ‘The ”Primitive” Unconscious of Modern Art’, October 34 (1985), pp. 45-70.
20 territory. Both the nation-state and the art institution conceal a sense of diversity – amongst people and artworks – in order to control the process of signification and thereby to keep up their
hegemony.
So, the art institution can be understood as a territory, comparable to the one of the nation-state, as it performs itself as an enclosed space that closes off the outside world. It presents itself as an autonomous space with its own logic. In accordance with this logic, the institution presents art as an aesthetic object, transcending reality. The institution thereby promotes a myth about art and art institutions as conserving eternal beauty, without referring to the world outside of the gallery space. This myth directs the way in which visitors interpret artworks. Many alternative ways of looking at art, distinct from this mythical narrative, are thus concealed in order to keep up the hegemony of the art institution. Autonomy Cube, by taking the form of a cube and taking up the term “cube” in its title, does not only refer to this discourse around this hegemony of the art institution but also takes a position within it. In the next paragraph I will further go into the way in which Autonomy Cube engages itself with this discourse.
21 2.2 Institutional Critique: disrupting the territory of the Art Institution
In the previous part I have described the way in which the space of the art institution performs its territory, in accordance to that of the nation-state. It does this by both being physically enclosed by the walls of the art institution and by offering an enclosed system of signification in which visitors cannot but interpret art in accordance with the logic the institution propagates. In this subchapter I will further theorize the way in which Autonomy Cube positions itself within this territorial space of the art institution. I will specifically do this by examining the way in which the cube relates to the artistic practice of “institutional critique”, that has often disrupted the enclosed space of the art institution.
Institutional critique is a term often used to describe an artistic practice that has as its main aim to disrupt and thereby to critique the enclosed character of the art institution. In the past, artists have done this through several means. The artist Marcel Broodthaers, for example, created his own fictional museum inside his studio, which allowed him to reflect on the ideological position of art institutions within society [fig. 3].26 And Michael Asher placed architectural alterations within the exhibition space in order to highlight and undermine the institutions’ claims to being neutral aesthetic spaces [fig. 4].27 In general, the practice of institutional critique attempts to lay bare the power structures that underlie the functioning of art institutions. By unveiling these elements of power, institutional critique discloses the art institution as not being isolated from society, but rather, as deriving its meaning from the socio-political reality in which it is situated. The notion of the space of the art institution as being a neutral place, distinct from the outside world thereby gets challenged. By making visible the connections between the art institution and the society outside of it, institutional critique thus breaches the institution’s enclosed character.
Autonomy Cube specifically taps into this history of Institutional Critique. This is, first of all, emphasized by artist Trevor Paglen himself, who describes his artwork as “being historically aligned with the history of institutional critique and people like Hans Haacke”.28 The cube’s engagement
with the discourse of institutional critique becomes even more apparent when one looks at the formal aspects of the artwork, which are very similar to Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube from 1963-65 [fig. 5]. This piece by Haacke equally exists of a Plexiglas cube, often exhibited on a
pedestal, but is different from Autonomy Cube as it is filled with water. The light that enters the cube
26
Marcel Broodthaers did this with his work Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section des Figures from 1972.
27 Michael Asher did this with his piece Installation from 1970 at Pomona College, for which he reconfigured
the interior space of a gallery after which he left the gallery open, without a door, 24 hours a day.
28 Dylan Kerr, ‘Can an Artist Take on the Government (and Win)? A Q&A with Trevor Paglen’, website Artspace:
<http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/art-bytes/trevor-paglen-interview-53096> (accessed 12 December 2016).
22 heats the air within it. This causes the water to condense, creating patterns of water drops against the walls of the box. The exact form these patterns take depends on the environment of the cube, that is, amongst other things, determined by the physical presence of visitors. The Condensation Cube thereby emphasizes the way in which the context of an artwork shapes its meaning and capacity. This challenges the idea of art as transcending the time and change inherent to the world in which it exists. Haacke’s cube thus questions the logic of art institutions being neutral spaces in which art is presented as having fixed aesthetic qualities, independent of their context. It could then be stated that Autonomy Cube, by taking a form that is similar to the Condensation Cube, precisely refers to the genealogy of institutional critique and to its capacity of disrupting the institution’s logic.
Besides the visual similarities with the Condensation Cube, Autonomy Cube also relates to Haacke’s work on a more conceptual level. In order to understand this relation I will first elaborate on a number of artworks Haacke created later on in his oeuvre, consisting of several visitor polls. In the work Gallery Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile, Part I from 1969-70, for example, Haacke asked gallery visitors in New York to mark both their birthplace and current residence on a large map of the city. This allowed him to show that the average gallery visitor lived in the more affluent areas of New York, and therefore belonged to the more privileged part of its population. Haacke thereby revealed the socio-political reality underlying the practices of art institutions, whereby their abstract neutrality could be questioned. In order to execute larger surveys that would give more
demographic information about the museum-going public, Haacke later decided to computerize his polls. At Documenta 5 in 1972 he did this with the work Documenta Visitors’ Profile that consisted of a questionnaire in several languages – English, German, French – that visitors could fill in. The answers were processed by a computer centre in Kassel after which they were printed out and placed within the exhibition space. The visitors of Documenta were thereby confronted with the lack of diversity – in class and culture – among them. Luke Skrebowski in his paper ‘Feedback Forms and Flow Charts: Hans Haacke and the Retooling of the Contemporary Museum’ describes this part of Haacke’s art practice to be a form of “info-institutional critique”: a form of institutional critique that critiques art institutions by disclosing information about them that would reveal the restricted socio-political position that underlies their practice and that of their public.29 By revealing specific data about the art institution and its visitors, Haacke thus challenges the institution’s appearance as being an unbiased place, functioning as a vacuum for art. The notion of the art institution as being isolated from society thereby gets countered, through which its sense of enclosedness gets cracked open.
In the meantime, however, works by Haacke that have critiqued the enclosed hegemony of art institutions through several means, have been co-opted by these very same institutes. This does
29 Luke Skrebowski, ‘An Opposite World is Possible: On Trevor Paglen and Jacob Applebaum’s Autonomy Cube’,
23 not only become apparent through the physical incorporation of several of his artworks in the collections of established art spaces – Haacke’s Condensation Cube is now part of the Tate Modern collection and his polls are regularly exhibited in established art institutes30 – but in the case of Haacke’s polls, it is also the method of criticism that has been co-opted by art institutions. According to Skrebowski, art institutions namely increasingly include the online feedback visitors share via digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter in their programming. Tate Modern, for example, has responded to several comments posted by people on Twitter about the Tate’s lack of response to the London riots by immediately launching a film programme about the history of unrest in the City of London.31 The museum thereby presents itself as a reflexive and responsive institution that does not repress its political dimension, but rather, includes the diverse socio-political views expressed by its audience on the internet. Thereby the museum seems to have incorporated Haacke’s info-institutional critique. This incorporation indicates a change in the way in which art institutions perform their territory. Whereas art institutions used to perform their space as being closed off from the socio-political reality outside of it, in order to present art as distinct from the time and space inherent to society, now they seem to have included this outside world. It could then be stated that the notion of the enclosed space of the white cube, as elaborated by O’Doherty in the 1970s and as taken as an entry-point in the former paragraph, is no longer entirely applicable. Instead, the art institution seems to have developed itself towards a more open space that
integrates the society in which it exists. What remains, however, is the control the institution has over the behaviour of visitors. The external feedback that is gained through several digital channels is incorporated, but only in accordance with the technocratic format that lies at the basis of the institution’s organization. This means that the online communication between the public and the institution is mainly used to gather data that will help the museum map the interest of their public in order to increase the number of visitors for the next event. Visitors are thereby mobilized into the direction of visiting the art institution. In this sense, the space of the art institution seems to be transformed from an enclosed space into an open space that is able to control its visitors in a more flexible way, through the widespread network of the internet. Thereby the space of the art
institution seems to have developed itself in line with Deleuze’s “society of control” on which I have elaborated in the first chapter of my thesis. The co-option of the artistic methodology of info-institutional critique thus makes apparent that the space of the art institution changed from an enclosed space to an open space with “free-floating control”, indicative of the society of control.
30
Haacke’s polls were, for example, presented at the 56th Biennale in Venice, from May 9th until November 22nd 2015.
31 Max Dax, ‘”It’s Time to Redefine the Term Failure”: An Interview with Tate Modern’s Chris Dercon’, website
24 It is within the context of the changed space of the art institution that Autonomy Cube conceptually relates to the info-institutional critique of Haacke. Both Haacke’s visitor polls and Autonomy Cube use data about visitors of the art institution to disrupt the institution’s hegemony. However, both artworks do this in very different ways. Whereas Haacke with his visitor polls reveals data about people as a way of critiquing the practice of the art institution, Autonomy Cube conceals them. Autonomy Cube namely allows visitors of the art institution to access the Tor network, which makes it possible for them to remain anonymous on the internet. Thereby the data of these visitors are not made visible, but instead, they are obscured. In my view, the difference between the ways in which these artworks work with data has to do with the fact that the space in which the art
institution exists has evolved over time. While Haacke’s polls attempted to critique the art
institution in a time in which it presented itself as an enclosed space, distinct from the socio-political reality in which it was situated, Paglen’s Autonomy Cube specifically critiques the art institution’s widespread control that comes with it being a more open space. Haacke critiques the isolated character of the exhibition space by making visible the connections between the art institution and the society outside of it. In turn, Autonomy Cube goes against the extensive control of the institution as it disrupts the means through which the institution performs this control, that is by gathering data of visitors on the internet. The cube mainly does this by making these data anonymous. Just like Haacke’s polls, the cube thus takes a critical position within the territory of the art institution. It could then be stated that Autonomy cube relates to the critical agenda of (info-)institutional critique, but that the cube practices its own critique in a radically different way.
In short, the relation of Autonomy Cube with the history of institutional critique becomes apparent through its visual similarities with the Condensation Cube by Hans Haacke, which is at the basis of the genre of institutional critique. Furthermore, Paglen’s cube relates to the genre of institutional critique on a more conceptual level as it uses a methodology that is similar to Haacke’s visitor polls; both works critique the art institution by making use of the data of visitors. However, whereas the polls disclose data as a way of critiquing the art institution, the cube actively conceals them. The two artworks both take a critical position within the territory of the art institution, but practice this critique in different ways. In my view, this has to do with the alteration of the space of the art institution from being enclosed to more open, with a more extensive control. The relation of Autonomy Cube with the practice of institutional critique thus reveals its critical position within the territory of the art institution, but also shows some specific differences in the way in which this critique is executed.
25 2.3 Institutional enhancement
In the former subchapter I have elaborated the way in which Autonomy Cube relates to the history of institutional critique, which has often disrupted the enclosed space of the art institution. This has allowed me to show that Autonomy Cube relates to the practice of institutional critique, but that it expresses its critique in a different way as it is situated in the contemporary context of its space; a more open space with extensive control that has developed itself in line with the society of control as described by Gilles Deleuze in his article ‘Postscript on the Society of Control’. In this part I will go into the exact way in which Autonomy Cube positions itself within the contemporary context of the space of the art institution, and thereby within the context of Deleuze’s control society. In doing so I will show that whereas Institutional Critique opposes itself towards the hegemony of the art
institution, the cube transforms its space.
Theoretician Krzysztof Ziarek in his book The Force of Art writes about the position of art in a society in which control gets increasingly flexible and therefore has a larger reach.32 According to Ziarek this has to do with new technological developments, such as the internet. Ziarek’s
understanding of this digitalized society with new and advanced forms of power and control corresponds to Deleuze’s society of control. But whereas Deleuze only goes into the mechanisms that constitute such a society as a whole, Ziarek specifically theorizes the role of art in it. Ziarek explains the “control” that is elaborated by Deleuze as being “power”. He states that the term power does not merely refer to power relations such as domination or violence, but that it signifies a broader formative force. It can be seen as a network of intentional forces constituting being. Patterns within the operation of power can for example be production, mobilisation, efficiency and normalisation. Power is organized and structured by “technicity”, which is the sum of public spaces, institutions and forms of relations through which flows of power are regulated and through which they are mobilized toward further increases in power. Because of new technological developments technicity has become more flexible through which it is able to organize power both on a larger scale and on a micro scale. New digital forms of communication, for example, can organize power globally and on the microscopic level of digital data. Ziarek therefore states that technicity, in the
contemporary world, has been transformed into digitality: the organization of things in terms of programmable information such as digital codes and data that can be endlessly reprogrammed. This new digital form of technicity allows power to operate with an increasing velocity and intensity and to penetrate society as never before.
32
